Art Exhibition Reflects Our Forgotten Prison Inmates
Posted on Sun Jan 02, 2005 at 09:27:37 AM EST
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Last week we noted that few Americans ever see the inside of a prison. A new art exhibition by Fiona Tan at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago brings viewers one step closer.
The brochure that goes along with the exhibition says, "Tan is interested not in making political proclamations or judgments with this work but in making visible a distinct segment of society that becomes invisible." But Tan's visual confrontation does exactly what good political art should do: it holds the viewer accountable to his or her own humanity. There's no shame in that.
These moving portraits seem to ask, "Why have you forgotten me? Do I look too much like your neighbor? Do I look like you? And what if I do look like you? Does that mean there's something criminal about you too?" What makes these images particularly riveting at this moment in history is that they come from a world we're not supposed to see. The question they pose is: What might we see that makes us afraid to look?
Here's a description of the exhibit, which Tan made at two men's prisons and two women's facilities in Illinois and California. She filmed about 300 inmates and guards, all of whom volunteered to be in the project.
The installation is composed of six hanging flat-panel screens encircling a handful of wooden benches. At first glance, the images on the display panels appear to be still photographs: portraits of inmates and guards in the U.S. correctional system, dressed either in their guard uniforms, their prison blues, denim and blue-armed baseball shirts, or white T-shirts and sweatpants. Some of the people appear to be kitchen workers or office clerks, some appear to be prison officials. It's hard to tell who they are in some cases, because there are no words to identify them and they don't speak.
After a few minutes of watching the panels, it becomes clear that these are not photographs but video images, in which the subject has been asked to stand as still as possible for about one minute at a time. But no one is able to stay perfectly still; their eyes blink, their fingers twitch, their bodies sway back and forth just a little, their chests rise and fall. Some of them purse their lips; some glare at the camera defiantly; some attempt to look tough and fail to hold the posture after a few seconds; some look completely carved out and blank, some allow their lips to curl in a forbidden smile. Those who do not have their arms behind their backs can't seem to figure out what to do with their hands.
These attempts to hold still, to be inexpressive, to just be in front of the camera, convey a potent sense of humanity--the vague sense of unease every human has when he or she attempts to look the world in the eye.
[hat tip to Rev. Mr.George W. Brooks, J.D., Director of Advocacy
Kolbe House, Chicago]
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